


Interlude After Murder

by orphan_account



Category: The Talented Mr Ripley (1999)
Genre: Challenge Response, Community: femslash_today, F/F, Femslash, Ficlet, International Day of Femslash, femslash day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-18
Updated: 2009-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:34:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two women in a hotel room after a murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude After Murder

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash-Today's 'Summer Lightning' Porn Battle. This doesn't perfectly fit either book or movie canon... Think of it sort of as a riff on the theme of these two ladies and a holiday murder gone unpunished?

Marge is asleep on the sofa. I should say she lounges, but she's asleep, deep asleep, the sort of sleep I can feel crawling upon me, too, in this hot weather, and after all the walking we've done. Her dress is hitched up - I can see where her nylons are pinned up. If it wasn't for the drool, she'd look like a Paris postcard. I think of black and white girls with their skirts hitched up, rounded bottoms, thighs slashed with dark garters.

I wander out into the balcony, hoping the breeze will clear my head. How long will they make us wait?

Until that afternoon, as it turns out. Marge is awake by now. She wrings her thin fingers, her whole self flashing anger and pain. Why is all I can feel just numb?

'There's no hard evidence against any particular individual at this point and Mr Ripley has an immaculate alibi,' says the constable. _Shut up, stupid American girls, go home and let us handle this,_ is what I hear. Marge argues. Suddenly tired again, I sit down, reach for a cup of tea. My hand shakes.

When he's gone she bursts into tears. Still numb, acting on convention rather than compassion, I fold her in my arms. She's slight and fragile, so breakable. I guess we all are. All it takes is one act of violence.

Two weeks on and we're still together, stuck in this city, neither having gathered the will or energy to move. I haven't known where to go in my mourning, have no place where I could go without being faced with friends and questions. She lingers because she still thinks there's something she can do. There's nothing. Tom Ripley's off the hook and how do we know it wasn't someone else, really?

One sweaty night she comes to my bed, crawling under the sheets, her thigh strangely cold despite the weather. 'I had a nightmare,' she explains and wraps herself around me, sweat on sweat, uncomfortable. I let her, and curl my fingers around her wrist, gently, like holding a bird.

I turn my head and kiss her, soft, lingering. She freezes. She melts. Her small hand presses hard on the back of my head, her teeth scratch my lip raw.

We fuck. That's what it is. It's animal and immediate. It's too hot, but it's necessary too. Her hands on my breasts under my nightdress, plucking and twisting my nipples. Her small hand. Fitting inside me. She punches me and I gasp, my head hitting the headboard. I grasp the edge of the bed, push back, grit my teeth.

It releases something, undoes a deadlock, brings the breeze to push our ship from the doldrums. Was it a ritual? Something to show us we're alive still? I don't know. Maybe it's what we were still waiting for.

In the morning I leave her asleep in my – our – dishevelled bed. I go to the loo, wash my hands and face. Smoke a cigarette on the balcony. Find the telephone, dial a number.

Order two tickets home.


End file.
